Workers at Met Urge Opera to Intervene in Their Bid to Unionize

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: February 26, 2001

For eight months, a court injunction barred restaurant workers at the Metropolitan Opera from criticizing the opera, but yesterday, with the injunction overturned, they faulted the Met for not intervening to make it easier for them to unionize.

Speaking at a community forum four blocks from the opera house, the workers said they earned barely enough to support their families, and they called on the Met to pressure the contractor that runs its restaurants, Restaurant Associates, to agree to a streamlined way for them to unionize.

Luis Enriguez, a porter in the Met's cafeteria, said he had a $4,000 hospital bill because his $8-an-hour pay was too low for him to afford health insurance. Noemi Fulgencia, a cashier, said her $250-a-week take-home pay was so meager that she has to share a one-bedroom apartment with three other people.

''It's very hard to live on this income,'' Ms. Fulgencia said.

The union that the workers want to join, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, said that half of the 95 restaurant workers at the Met earn less than $10 an hour.

Two City Council members who spoke at the forum, Ronnie M. Eldridge and Guillermo Linares, threatened to oppose Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's plan to give $240 million in city money to Lincoln Center's renovation unless the Met did more to help the unionization drive. The forum, held at St. Paul the Apostle Church, attracted nearly 300 people, most of them members of the hotel and restaurant workers union.

The Met's press office was closed last night and officials could not be reached for comment. But the Met has maintained in the past that the dispute is between the contractor and its workers.

The workers have urged the Met to pressure its food contractor to agree to an expedited unionization process. Under that process, Restaurant Associates would grant union recognition, not through a secret-ballot election, the most common method, but as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted to unionize.

Union officials say that two years ago, more than three-fourths of the food workers signed cards saying they wanted to unionize.

Restaurant Associates maintains that an election is a fairer way to determine workers' sentiment, but the union insists the company has run an intimidation campaign that makes a fair election impossible.

Opera officials assert that it is improper for the union to pressure the Met in any way. Last June, the Met persuaded a judge in Federal District Court in Manhattan to enjoin the union from tying the opera to the dispute. But three weeks ago, the United States Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned that injunction, concluding that it violated the First Amendment.